For the past couple of years I’ve noticed that in certain contexts the preposition ‘around’ has replaced ‘about’. Here are some examples:
questions around inflation
discussion around monarchy
concerns around inflation
debates around
issues around
Have you been observing this development too?
I have net seen or heard it used that way in AmE.
They are both commonly used to mean approximately. ‘Around’ is probably more common.
We will eat around 5:00.
We will eat about 5:00.
It costs around five dollars.
It costs about five dollars.
Both can sometimes be used for physical location.
She’s walking around the house. (far more common)
She’s walking about the house.
They are sometimes used together, usually in poetic or other creative writing. This isn’t common though.
Around and about
Round and about
‘Round about’ can also mean a traffic circle.
As far as I understand the trend of replacing about with around started in the US:
I really hope this doesn’t catch on. I swear some people can’t be normal. They have to be chic just for the sake of being chic. It’s like people who wear some new fashion that looks horrible, but they wear it anyway just to be different and “stylish”.
One problem with the OEC and other corpuses is that their sources include a lot of professional writers who don’t use normal language. Students are taught to intentionally use a wider variety of words when writing ( I was taught the same thing ). In writing, repetition of words and phrases should be avoided.
This post from 2018 on StackExchange is also interesting:
I work as a software engineer in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ever since starting work, I’ve noticed people using the word “around” where I’d say “about” or “on” for example:
“I have a question around metrics.”
“Can you forward me the thread around developer engagement?”
“The company has been doing a lot of work around diversity and inclusion.”
I feel like I never really heard this usage growing up in Pennsylvania, or in university in St. Louis, but it seems pervasive here. I particularly hear it from executives and product managers who work in the tech industry.
Everything about that post puts it in perfect context. The writer is a Midwesterner, which probably means he’s more down-to-earth and less susceptible to trendy stuff. He’s working in California, which is just the opposite. On top of that, he’s hearing it from executives and managers in The Bay Area - very likely MBA types who thrive on using weird and trendy language.
At one time I semi-seriously said I’d never work for a company that had MBAs working there.
That writer is also a programmer. There is a reason why programmers and engineers loved the cartoon Dilbert. It’s written from the perspective of a programmer, and is satirical abut the MBA and marketing types. In other words, it’s making fun of the trendy types who use words like ‘around’ instead of ‘about’.
Then there was also “Buzzword Bingo” which also made fun of those types. I don’t know anyone who actually played it, but everyone in the tech industry during the 90s knew about it. The idea was hilarious.
I don’t think I’ve heard this, though I may have in the form I discuss below. I don’t think that would have raised any red flags for me.
Th mental image I have is of something relating to something else from several different directions.
I don’t have any facts, but here are my impressions.
“About” here seems to mean “regarding” or “on the subject of”.
“Around” implies to me “regarding various different aspects of”, and not just “near”.
I’m sure I’ve heard #2, which is close to #3. I would think that the first noun, “controversy” in the examples, would certainly need to be plural so that you can have multiple aspects, though the particular word “controversy” I think could cover multiple areas of disagreement. I don’t think you can have one controversy surrounding or around the monarchy.
Later I’ll have some thoughts about the second noun in the sentences.
I haven’t seen or heard it.
When you use ‘around’, you are likely to be away from what is being debated, sort of beating ‘around’ the bush!
Here is another example:
The current narrative around inequality and climate change looks a lot like the findings of an Oxfam report on household income and emissions.
Again, this could just be me, but “inequality“, “developer engagement”, and “diversity and inclusion” seem to be too amorphous to talk about questions or controversies being “around” them.
I thought the Butterfield editorial above was quite interesting and I think my preference for some sort of central thought rather than vague ideas derives from the same idea that he discussed:
“If you wanted to be leadenly literalistic, you could argue that this use of around foregrounds its physical meaning to create an image of something hovering around something else without actually touching it.“